The Valkyrie Song jf-5

by Craig Russell

  ‘But she doesn’t gain from the killings financially.’

  ‘She did take Westland’s phone, diary and wallet.’

  Susanne shook her head. ‘That’s not the kind of score a Black Widow kills for. And I don’t see her deriving a sexual benefit from the killings — unless she orgasms because of the act of killing, the violence itself.’

  ‘But that would be extremely rare in a female killer, wouldn’t it?’ asked Fabel.

  ‘Yep…’ said Susanne. ‘It’s very common in male serial-killing behaviour, but extremely rare in female killers.’

  ‘But not totally unknown?’

  ‘You’ve heard of Irma Grese?’

  ‘The Bitch of Belsen?’ said Fabel, frowning. ‘Yes, of course I’ve heard of her.’

  ‘Grese had only turned twenty-three when she was hanged for crimes against humanity, meaning that she began committing those crimes from the age of about nineteen or twenty. She was a small, plain, not too bright and totally unexceptional girl who came from a basically anti-Nazi family; yet she developed a taste — a hunger — for exceptional cruelty. Both psychological and physical. She had a whip woven out of cellophane which would cut prisoners as she whipped them. She shot and beat prisoners to death, and it was clear she derived gratification from it. Everything points to her being a sexual sadist. As a psychological case, she serves as a warning about how female sexual drive can be channelled into political or religious hysteria. The thing about Grese was that she was an absolutely fanatical member of the League of German Girls. She was obsessed with it. These girls were indoctrinated with Nazi ideology at their most impressionable age, and at a key stage in their sexual development. Almost all of the female guards in concentration camps were recruited from the ranks of the League and Grese’s sexual maturation coincided with her being in a position of power where she could physically abuse prisoners. It was an exceptional context and an exceptional point in history.’

  ‘And Grese’s sexual sadism was exceptional…’ Fabel concluded the thought.

  ‘With both sets of murders I find the violence — the expert violence — totally atypical of what I would expect. This is behaviour that would normally take a long, long time to mature.’

  ‘So you think it could be the same killer?’ Fabel was confused.

  8

  She was younger than many of the women he had been with of late. Younger and more attractive.

  He had a naturally suspicious nature and found himself wondering why she had made the running. It was not unusual, though, he told himself. Younger women were known to go for more mature men. Particularly those they felt were intellectually or economically superior. Hypergamy, they called it. He laughed at the thought.

  ‘Do you have family, Herr Gerdes?’ Ute Cranz asked as she came in to serve the soup.

  ‘Not of my own.’ He smiled. ‘I have three nieces, of whom I am very fond. What about you, Frau Cranz? Do you have family?’

  ‘No.’ She smiled sadly. ‘Just my late husband. I do have a sister, but she became very ill. She’s in hospital. Permanently.’

  ‘Oh… I am sorry to hear that,’ said Gerdes.

  ‘Please, call me Ute. May I offer you more wine?’

  ‘Then you must call me Robert. Yes, please. Aren’t you going to join me yet?’

  ‘Perhaps later. I very seldom drink, Robert. I find it muddles me, even a little. But please, I want you to enjoy some.’

  Gerdes took a long sip. ‘It really is very good.’

  Gerdes sat and ate and drank and listened to Ute Cranz. She had that strange ability that women seemed to have: to talk a lot but say nothing. But he smiled and nodded and said the right things at the right time. She certainly was an attractive woman: she had large, dark eyes and her chestnut hair was cut short. She had an appealing figure, too: slim, but with a hint of voluptuousness through the sheen of her dress. Yet there was something about her that troubled him: he was certain they had met somewhere before.

  ‘Have you lived in Hamburg all your life?’ she asked.

  ‘Long enough for me to consider myself a native Hamburger,’ he said, taking another sip of his wine. ‘What about you, Ute?’

  ‘Oh no. I moved here from the East. Mecklenburg. A town called Zarrentin. It’s small, but very pretty. It’s on a lake. The Schaalsee. Before the Wall came down it was right on the border with the West. We had an ugly border checkpoint and fences and stuff. But that’s long gone now.’

  ‘If you don’t mind my asking, how long has it been since Herr Cranz passed on?’ asked Gerdes. He was annoyed that his voice sounded, at least to him, a little slurry; yet the wine seemed to have had no other effect on him. ‘If you don’t mind me saying, you seem tragically young to be a widow.’

  ‘Three years. Nearly four.’ She refilled his glass.

  She served a typical Hamburg eel soup, followed by duck breasts in a spicy orange sauce and a strawberry-mousse dessert. It was, he had to admit, a well-cooked meal. Afterwards she served coffee and Asbach brandy and asked him to sit on the sofa.

  When he stood up, his legs felt wobbly and he had to steady himself on the edge of the table. What was wrong with him? He hadn’t had that much to drink. Ute Cranz noticed his stumble but passed no comment. It was embarrassing none the less. He sat on the sofa and sipped his Asbach.

  She came back from the kitchen and sat next to him on the sofa. Gerdes smiled weakly.

  ‘I’m afraid I don’t feel very well…’ The words came to his lips with difficulty. He felt numb. And, for some reason, afraid. He decided to stop drinking the Asbach and tried to set the glass down on the arm of the sofa, but it slipped and smashed on the floor.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he tried to say, but the words came out as a low, incoherent moan.

  ‘It’s all right,’ Ute said, clearly interpreting his meaning but remaining totally unperturbed by his condition. ‘It’s not your fault. It’s because of the metaxalone.’

  Gerdes tried to articulate a question but, this time, he couldn’t even manage a moan.

  ‘I had to think it through very carefully. I wanted to immobilise you without there being too much of a sedative or analgesic effect. The great thing about metaxalone is that its effectiveness is vastly increased when it’s digested.’

  Gerdes tried to move, but he felt as if his arms and legs were made of lead.

  ‘Oh… and there’s some succinylcholine in there as well,’ she said, as if suddenly recalling an ingredient for a cake recipe. ‘You know, suxamethonium chloride. I’ll be injecting you with some more of that later.’

  Gerdes felt a scream rise from deep within, but it failed to break the surface. He felt his head begin to flop backwards. She eased it onto the cushioned back of the sofa.

  ‘Of course, you are very familiar with suxamethonium chloride,’ she continued. ‘It is a highly effective deep-muscle relaxant and is an excellent assassin’s tool: you can make it look like someone has died from natural causes. Heart failure. Unless, of course, some diligent pathologist picks up on hyperkalaemia. But don’t worry, the dosage you’ve absorbed won’t stop your heart. It’s much more effective intravenously, but the great thing about suxamethonium chloride is that it’s colourless, odourless and soluble in water and alcohol. You’ve ingested quite an amount of it along with the metaxalone over the evening, Robert. Oh, do you mind if I stop this silly nonsense and call you by your real name: Georg? Oh yes, I know who you are, Major Drescher. I know all about you.’

  Ute disappeared for a moment into the kitchen and returned with a metal tray that had a disposable hypodermic on it. He wanted to scream, to fight, to grab her and squeeze the life out of her, but he couldn’t. He was completely immobilised. He found that he could still blink, but that was all. A great terror surged through him. It was claustrophobia: a panic caused by the realisation that he was trapped within his own body. Ute jabbed the hypodermic carelessly and roughly into his forearm. He felt the needle jab painfully into his skin. He felt it, but he didn’t e
ven flinch.

  ‘Yes, I know, Major Drescher… that was a little taste of what’s to come. The succinylcholine isn’t anaesthetic and is only analgesic in muscle tissue. I promise that you will feel absolutely everything I do to you. They use it in many states in the US as part of lethal-injection execution. Highly controversial… there’s a theory that God knows how many condemned prisoners have died in absolute agony because the anaesthetic part of the injection hasn’t worked. But because they have been completely immobilised by the succinylcholine, there is no outward sign that they are in the most terrible pain. Like being burned at the stake, but from the inside out. But, like I say, you know all about it, don’t you? That’s what you taught your girls, isn’t it? Is that what you meant when you told me that you had three nieces?’

  How did she know his real name was Drescher? He had painstakingly covered up his traces. Only a professional — a top professional — could have uncovered them. Who was she? Where had he met her before?

  Drescher’s mind raced and his heart pounded. The thing that frightened him most was that Ute kept disappearing from his field of view. Incapable of moving his head, he could not follow her movements with his eyes. His head was tilted back and he could only see what was immediately before him. Ute reappeared for an instant. He saw a flash of something that looked like a thick roll of heavy-duty blue plastic. She bent down and was lost from view, but he guessed that she was unrolling the plastic on the floor in front of the sofa.

  She moved around behind him, tucked her arms under his armpits and pulled him off the sofa. He rolled off the edge and his face slammed painfully onto the plastic-covered hardwood floor. His nose was pressed hard against the floor and he heard his breath hiss and bubble through his bleeding nose. She turned his head sideways, his cheek against the plastic. He was facing the sofa and could see an earring that Ute Cranz obviously had dropped and it had rolled out of sight. He thought how surreal it would be that that would be one of the last things he would see: a forgotten earring under a sofa. He guessed she would find it soon: when she was cleaning up after killing him.

  She rolled him onto his back and slid him across the living room and through into the kitchen. Drescher might not have been able to see the whole room, but he now had a pretty good idea of what was about to happen to him. Almost everything in the kitchen that he could see had been covered in the same blue plastic. To protect it from the splashes of blood and other body fluids. There would be no mess afterwards. And while it was happening to him there would be no screams. No cries of agony to alert the neighbours. All Drescher’s screaming would echo only in the confines of his own skull.

  Ute leaned over him and pushed her face into his. ‘I wouldn’t have been a good student for you, would I, Major Drescher? There is no forensic distance here, is there? But, you see, I don’t care. I don’t care about being caught. You will be all over me, Drescher. Your blood, your sweat, your fear… I am going to let it cover me. But first, Comrade Major, we’re going to have a little slide show…’

  9

  ‘Okay,’ said Fabel, pouring Susanne another glass of wine. ‘We’ve ruled out that we’re dealing with an Angel of Death/Mercy or a Black Widow. So that leaves us with her being a Revenge Killer or simply insane.’

  ‘Insanity is out. Serial killers tend to have identity disorders but only a tiny percentage are clinically insane. And within serial killing there are the two personality types: higher IQ and organised or lower IQ and disorganised. This killer is highly organised. That suggests to me that she’s smart and she’s not mad.’

  Fabel set his glass back on the table. ‘Revenge?’

  ‘The original Angel killings in the nineties had revenge all over them. In its most abstract form, I mean. The castration thing was a rather unsubtle way of declaring that she was emasculating abusers. Revenge Killers are most often women who kill a series of individuals because they perceive those individuals to have victimised them in the past. This could be real victimisation — revenge for earlier abuse — or it can be that revenge is exacted on a type of person who is targeted by association.’

  ‘But there was no connection between any of the victims. Their paths never crossed and they were picked at random.’

  ‘No, they weren’t. They were targeted, Jan, because they were users of prostitutes. Just like the victims of Aileen Wuornos in the USA around the same time. Wuornos had been abused as a child and then as a prostitute. She projected her experience on every man who used prostitutes and saw them as potential abusers. She killed them in revenge for what she had gone through at the hands of men like them.’

  ‘But that only fits with the first series of murders in the nineties. There’s no symbolic castration this time round.’

  ‘Exactly,’ Susanne said emphatically. ‘Castration was the signature for each murder. A fundamental element. If you’re dealing with a copycat, why has she dropped this central motif?’

  ‘I know what you mean,’ said Fabel. ‘That’s been bothering me. The answer I’ve come up with is that it’s too messy. And takes up too much time.’

  ‘But if she is the original Angel, or if she’s a true copycat, she would feel — I don’t know — unfulfilled if she didn’t emulate the ritual of the original killings.’

  ‘Okay,’ said Fabel. ‘So what you’re saying is that we had a revenge killer the first time round and now we’ve got someone pretending to be a copycat?’

  ‘There’s something else that bothers me. Women are in the main less violent than men, agreed?’

  ‘Agreed.’

  ‘That is reflected across all aspects of behaviour, including, ironically, serial killers. Less than fifteen per cent of all violent crime is committed by women. And only one in six serial killers is a woman. Of those, the vast majority use non-violent means — poisoning, more than anything else. And if they do use violence, then it tends to be smothering or strangulation. Wuornos, of course, used a gun. But the point is they don’t tend to slash, stab or bludgeon victims to death, which male serial killers do. Both the murders in the late nineties and the recent killings are extremely violent and bloody.’

  ‘And also highly efficient,’ said Fabel.

  ‘The efficiency fits the pattern. The violence doesn’t.’

  ‘I had a call from Ulrich Wagner, the guy at the BKA who’s helping me coordinate the setting-up of the Super Murder Commission thing. He told me that a woman has escaped from the secure state mental hospital in Mecklenburg. I’ve listed her officially as a possible for these murders. Her escape and her activities before being committed were those of a highly organised killer. On top of which she belongs to the fourth group of female serials. She’s insane. And that means all bets are off. Oh, by the way, she castrated three victims.’

  ‘That makes her a fit for the first series of murders. Not this.’

  ‘Exactly. And she was confined to the hospital for the whole duration of the first series.’

  ‘I can see why she may be a front runner. But there’s still something about the violence of these attacks that doesn’t fit with a female serial.’

  ‘So what are you saying? That we’re looking for a man dressed as a woman?’

  ‘No, Jan,’ said Susanne. ‘I’m not saying this isn’t a woman. But has it never occurred to you that we might not be dealing with a serial killer at all?’

  ‘As a matter of fact it has,’ said Fabel. He contemplated his wine, swirling it in the glass. ‘This doesn’t make any sense, I know, but bear with me… You know Jens Jespersen’s death?’

  ‘Of course — that’s the whole reason why Karin Vestergaard is here, isn’t it?’

  ‘Quite. Well, I have this feeling that his death is in some way connected with all this.’

  ‘But there’s no similarity, surely…’

  ‘I’ve been a policeman for a long time, Susanne, and one thing that I’ve learned to be suspicious about is coincidences. Wherever I see a coincidence, there tends to be a connection. And I find it one hell
of a huge coincidence that Jespersen was down here looking for a female killer and we just happen to have one running around St Pauli.’

  ‘But we’re talking about two completely different types of killer.’

  ‘Are we?’ said Fabel. ‘Karin Vestergaard said that before she and Jespersen busted Goran Vuja i c six years ago he talked about this contract killer called the Valkyrie. He said she had been very effective at taking out her targets. She made some look like accidents, others like suicides or natural causes. What if Jake Westland and Armin Lensch weren’t victims of the Angel of St Pauli or the Angel Part Two…’

  ‘What? They were victims of a contract killer? Then why all the symbolism? Why did she tell Westland she was the Angel?’

  ‘Think about it. That’s exactly what she did — she told him to tell us. She injured him to exactly the right degree for him to deliver his message before he died. It doesn’t sound like an amateur, does it?’

  ‘So you think we’ve got someone hiding in plain sight?’

  ‘I think it’s a possibility. The Angel is maybe really the Valkyrie. She wants us to believe she is killing at random.’

  Susanne was lost in thought for a moment. ‘There is something else that’s been bothering me…’ she said eventually. ‘And it confuses things even more. As you know, one other thing that differentiates male and female serial killers is the duration of their activities. Male serials, on average, are active for less than five years. Sometimes for only a matter of months. Female serial killers are active over a much longer period. Ten, fifteen years. Longer, maybe. It doesn’t fit with the first spate of killings.’

  ‘You’re saying those killings are suspect, too?’

  ‘Yes. But I’m not suggesting it’s the same killer. Yet another massive difference between male and female serial killers is the motive. Of the four kinds we discussed, the profit motive is by far the most common. So, if you’re right and these recent killings are the work of a professional contract killer, whether she’s a serial killer or not is simply a matter of semantics.’